What’s caught your eye during the Burt Munro Challenge 2021?
Our team loves when the Burt Munro Challenge rolls into town, and 2021 is no exception.
Classic Motorcycle Mecca is the place to be during the challenge, and we have an absolute ball chatting to those who pop into the museum to check out our collection of vintage and veteran bikes.
So, what’s really taken the fancy of our visitors this year?
There’s no doubt about it – guests are blown away by the sheer size and scale of the collection at Classic Motorcycle Mecca. Recently-completed renovations have transformed our museum into a massive space: spanning three floors, and two full inner-city buildings.
And, trust us, despite its size Classic Motorcycle Mecca is chocka with some of the most incredible bikes ever made.
Julian Jones, from Auckland, was in town for his third Burt Munro Challenge. 2021 marked his first visit to Classic Motorcycle Mecca – and he says it lived up to the hype.
“I’ve never seen more Vincents, so many Broughs – I just can’t believe it. I’ve been around bikes my whole life but there’s some models in here I never even knew existed. I just think the amount of bikes is phenomenal,” he says.
As far as standouts go? He reckons you can’t go past the 2007 Vincent Black Shadow.
“It’s hard to choose just one bike, because there’s so many of them, but that one was definitely quite interesting.”
Self-professed petrolheads Dennis Roderick and Jane Black, from the Kapiti Coast, couldn’t pick a favourite bike amongst the collection – there are just too many beauties to choose from.
“We’ve gone round quite a few of the bikes so far, but we’re still going – we’ll be here for quite a while. There’s a lot to see, isn’t there?” Roderick says.
Black says the stories accompanying each of the classic motorcycles were just as impressive as the bikes themselves.
“I’m really enjoying the history, all of the information. Things like, I remember Ginger Molloy riding back in the 1970s. It’s been really interesting.”
Warren McFarlane was part of a group of nine mates – six riders, and three people in a ‘support vehicle’ – who made the journey down to Invercargill for the Burt from Napier.
While admittedly not as much of a motorbike enthusiast as some of his crew, “everybody I told I was coming here said the same thing – ‘you’ve got to go and check this out’.”
For him, learning more – and being able to see – the developments in the engineering and technology of the motorcycles on display was pretty fascinating stuff.
“Just seeing the way the bikes developed over the years, going from those early ones from 1902 and then bikes from just 10 years later, where the way they were put together was so different in comparison, it’s been really interesting,” he says.